Category Archives: Print Advertising

Building brand awareness on campus is an essential college advertising strategy. In the third and final part of this series we’re going to explore 3 college advertising brand awareness programs and why they work. If you’re not caught up on the series, check out part 1 and part 2.

Effective College Advertising Brand Awareness Programs Part 3

7. College Poster Advertising

College poster advertising is where poster ads are placed on campus bulletin boards in prominent locations at select universities and colleges. Poster advertising can be broad in scope, generating brand awareness throughout the entire campus, or it can be highly targeted, placing posters ads in hard science classrooms.

College postering remains relevant in college marketing. Print remains an effective advertising medium in reaching students on college campuses.

Why College Postering Remains Relevant in College Advertising

When brands and companies think of advertising to students, they often think of digital advertising. After all, students spend a lot of their time online, on social media, and on their smartphones. This coupled with the fact that print advertising is declining makes most marketers look toward digital and experiential mediums, and while these platforms can be highly successful, print shouldn’t be overlooked when advertising to students.

In order to have a successful college postering campaign you need to use targeted marketing to reach the best audience, have monitoring systems in place to guarantee exposure, and implement tracking to measure effectiveness.

College postering seems like a relatively simple process: hang posters on campus bulletin boards in high-traffic locations. However, a lot of work goes into making a college postering campaign successful. Follow these steps for an effective and results driven college postering campaign.

Here’s a list of the 5 most popular college advertising blog posts on College Marketing INsider from 2014:

1. 2 Millennial Marketing Strategies for Multi-Generational Marketing

Millennials hold the key to multi-generational marketing as their power to influence other generations is quite substantial despite, or perhaps because of, the struggles they face in the workforce. Explore 2 millennial marketing strategies for multi-generational marketing here.

Learn how to generate brand awareness on campus and reinforce your brand image with consistent brand messaging across marketing channels.

How to Generate Brand Awareness On Campus

1. Develop Consistent Brand Messaging Across Marketing Channels

Before you employ an on campus advertising campaign, you must develop a story or brand message that will resonate across marketing channels. This message needs to be consistent visually, as well as thematically. You want people to quickly look at a company ad or image and immediately associate it with your brand. This consistency will greatly enhance your ability to generate brand awareness on campus quickly and effectively.

Think print advertising is dead? Think again. Print advertising, when used in innovative ways, can leave quite the impression and encourage meaningful engagement. From billboards to magazine ads, there are a lot of different print ads out there, vying for people’s attention. One way to stand out among the clutter is to use ad mediums that aren’t commonly used; this will attract notice and draw attention to your brand.

Use evocative, eye-catching images when engaging in college poster campaigns. The poster will capture students’ attention and generate brand awareness.

There’s a lot of advertising that takes place on a college campus. It makes sense, the majority of college students have recently left home and generally speaking have a lot of discretionary spending money. They want to have a good time and live the college experience, and they are willing to pay to make this happen.

That said college students are discerning about how they choose to spend their money. The other day I was on campus looking at one of the many campus bulletin boards and I was drawn in by a particular poster advertising an upcoming African dance, music, and fashion exhibition. Since I have no ties to African culture and no particular interest in dance, music, and fashion, I began to analyze why this particular poster caught my eye.

On-campus paper advertising typically employs posters, handouts, or a combination thereof. While ideal coverage would dictate the use of both methods, a choice between the two must sometimes be made; I’ll weigh the relative merits of each.

In part one of this series I made a case for paper advertising being an integral part of a college marketing portfolio and explored some of the benefits of distributing campus posters. Here I’ll do a similar analysis of handouts.

For my purposes here, handouts include any kind of paper advertisement that is given out to students in person, preferably by a college street team. The actual advertisement could be a coupon, a promotional pamphlet, or even just a smaller, briefer version of a poster if combined with that college advertising solution. Printing a QR code on the handout is also a good idea.

On-campus paper advertising typically employs posters, handouts, or a combination thereof. While ideal coverage would dictate the use of both methods, a choice between the two must sometimes be made; I’ll weigh the relative merits of each.

Despite increasing use of electronic forms of information dissemination, paper advertisements remain one of the best college advertising solutions. This is true for several reasons: 1) Most college campuses offer numerous locations where such material can be posted or distributed; 2) Physical advertisements can’t simply be blocked like electronic ones can; and 3) Students, who are already familiar with the layout of their school, can be employed to distribute the posters or handouts at low cost.

QR Codes are an effective way to add a digital element to a print campaign, but there are certain things to keep in mind when incorporating QR Codes in college marketing campaigns in order to maximize your return on investment.

The use of QR Codes has been steadily on the rise in advertising in general and in college marketing as well over the past couple years and will continue to rise as more and more students buy and use smartphones capable of reading them. QR Codes provide a unique way of taking an inexpensive print media campaign and adding a digital element to the campaign allowing for a well-balanced college advertising initiative consisting of print and digital.

Once you have made the decision to incorporate QR Codes into your college marketing, you now must figure the best way to design and implement them. Having a firm understanding of how they work and what function they can serve is critical to the success of your campaign and getting the best return on your investment.

NAM Youth Marketing offers marketing to college campuses and classrooms nationwide. We leverage print, digital, and social media marketing strategies to maximize your business prospects with the college and youth market.